A couple of weeks ago we released an optional tracking parameter that would request permission before tracking a visitor. This was done to comply with the recent EU privacy directive.

Thanks to a client’s suggestion, we have taken this much further and you can now enable this on a per country basis. You do not need to modify your tracking code in any way and simply enable this under Administration (there is a text link for Tracking Opt-in Preferences at the top of the Administration Overview page).

The beauty of this solution is that detects the visitors location such that your North American visitors will never see the permission pop-up, but other countries you specify will.

If the visitor opts out of tracking, he or she will not be asked again unless he or she deletes cookies or visits from a different browser. If the visitor opts out of tracking, Pardot treats it in exactly the same manner as though the browser had sent a Do Not Track header.

What is not tracked?

• Page views
• Form and landing page views
• File downloads
• Custom redirect clicks

What is still tracked?

• Form and landing page submissions
• Email sends, opens, and clicks

This solution makes Pardot amongst the most compliant and flexible analytics solution with respect to the EU Privacy Directive.

There are a lot of stats on both the Form and Landing Page Reports, but previously the data table of prospects at the bottom of each would only display those prospects with a submission. To get a list of prospects performing other activities, you had to use automation rules.

Now you can click on the unique views, clicks and errors numbers as well as the submissions to reload the table with a list of prospects that matches the given statistic. These links exist both on the individual report page and within the list of all reports from the main report page. By default the list of prospects with form/landing page submissions will still load as before. You can still also filter by date so it would be possible, for example, to easily see a list of prospects who viewed a landing page within the past week.

Note:

• The statistics in the report may be higher than the number of prospects displayed above as prospects may have submitted the form multiple times, cleared cookies between submissions, have been deleted/archived, or taken the action anonymously (as visitors).

Previously you could filter the emails table by “All Sent Emails”, which showed you every email you had sent via Pardot. We have added another filter to cut this down to show only List Emails, which can then be copied and resent to other lists if needed.

Today we’re super excited to release a very anticipated feature – Prospect Accounts and CRM sync for accounts.

Prospect Accounts give you the ability to group prospects that work for the same company under the same umbrella, allowing you to roll-up and keep all the information about that company (e.g. shipping/billing information, company size, revenue, etc) all in one place. This reduces duplication and conflicting information.

How does Prospect Account data get into Pardot? If you have a salesforce.com, SugarCRM, or Microsoft Dynamics CRM connector, the account data will sync down into Pardot automatically when Pardot detects a Lead or Contact with a valid Account reference in the CRM. This sync is one-way and treats the CRM as the master – so when Prospect Account sync is active from the CRM, you will not be able to create, edit, delete Prospect Accounts or associate them with Prospects – this must be done through the CRM.

If you do not have a CRM connector, you will be able to manually create, edit, and delete Prospect Accounts and associate them with Prospects by editing a Prospect.

What can you do with Prospect Accounts? Just like Prospects, all the data for Prospect Accounts is available for building Segmentation and Automation Rules.

What information can Prospect Accounts store? Prospect Accounts come with the following set of built-in fields, that can be configured by an administrator to be a text field, dropdown, check box, radio button, or text area type field. Administrators also have control over which, if any, CRM field these sync with.

• Annual Revenue
• Billing Address One
• Billing Address Two
• Billing City
• Billing Country
• Billing State
• Billing Zip
• Description
• Fax
• Industry
• Name
• Number
• Number of Employees
• Ownership
• Phone
• Rating
• Shipping Address One
• Shipping Address Two
• Shipping City
• Shipping Country
• Shipping State
• Shipping Zip
• SIC Code
• Site
• Ticker Symbol
• Type
• Website

Prospect Accounts also have custom fields which can be set up to augment the above built-in fields. Just like the built-in fields these can be configured to be a text field, dropdown, check box, radio button, or text area type field, and also set up to pull data from a corresponding field in your CRM.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think about this great new addition. Let us know in the comments!

Notes:

• If you have one of the above-mentioned CRMs, Accounts sync over in a similar manner to opportunities (e.g. when a prospect syncs). Pardot does not automatically pull them all over for you if their associated prospects are not already set to sync (e.g. they change or become active in some way).
• Pardot will also only pull in accounts that have corresponding prospects in Pardot (similar to opportunities).

Feature Overview

We have just released a major update to the way Pardot interacts with Jigsaw. Previously the Jigsaw icon next to the prospect’s name simply opened a search in Jigsaw for the prospect. Now if you click the icon, it will open up a dialog showing you which fields are available to pull down from Jigsaw. You can see which fields you already have data for in Pardot and choose whether or not to pull in the Jigsaw data (and overwrite the existing data).

Why are some data points not pre-checked?

• Pardot does not pre-check Revenue or Employees. We request these from Jigsaw in the form of an integer (rather than the more intuitive range) since that is what certain CRM systems (including salesforce.com) require when syncing with those fields. Since this is not always accurate, we have left this up to the user.
• Pardot also does not pre-check phone number. Since phone number is not a free data point in Jigsaw (you must have an account and pay for the information), we are searching for the company record’s phone number rather than the contact record’s.

Why isn’t Jigsaw data automatically pulled in?

Since Jigsaw is a crowd-sourced database, you will occasionally see records that contain inaccurate or incomplete data. Because there is the potential for a miss, we did not want to allow automatic syncing with Jigsaw.

Can I tie this in to my paid Jigsaw account?

Not currently. For now, we are using Jigsaw’s public API’s to access free data (which is a wealth of data). You will not be able to pull in paid information through this feature.

What if I still just want to search for the record in Jigsaw?

Not a problem — you can still pull up the search by clicking the Jigsaw icon in the data sync pop-up. There have been no changes to the company lookup — the icon next to the company name still pulls up a search in Jigsaw.

The main Prospect List was previously only filterable by one date type: Last Activity Date. You can now also filter and sort by Created Date and Updated Date. These two new filters make it very easy to see who was created in a given timeframe or which records were modified. Similar to the way all filters work, you can cut down the database to the prospects you want and export them, create a list out of them, or tag them using the icons located at the top right of the table. You will notice that when you change the date filter (for example from Last Activity to Created Date), you will see the date /time column also change to match.

This feature seems like a small one but it is hugely useful.

Left Hand Navigation

Data Table Updates

We have just rolled out another incremental improvement to the form, form handler, and landing page reports (other recent improvements were metric drill downs and flexible date ranges). There is now a bar graph that changes dynamically depending on the metric and date range selected. This visual element makes it easy to see trends over time for a given metric. Note that the stats, graph, and prospect table are all updated when the date range is changed.

Concept

Pardot CRM syncing now includes three new (optional) data points centered around the concept of first web touch with a prospect.

New Fields

To start syncing this data, the fields should be added to your CRM.

salesforce.com

Simply download our latest AppExchange package and it will install the three new fields. You will still need to add them to both your contact and lead layouts if you would like them to be visible.

SugarCRM

Similar to salesforce.com, the fields can be added by installing our latest Pardot for SugarCRM package. If you have your own install of SugarCRM, you can simply install as normal through the module loader. If you are using SugarOnDemand, load the package via the module loader but then also open a ticket with SugarCRM support letting them know to allow the package install. The package uses several methods that are not approved by SugarOnDemand’s automated scanner and they will need to manually allow it for you.

NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The three fields will need to be manually added. You can label them anything you would like, but the field IDs must be:

• First Referrer – Microsoft Dynamics CRM: pi_first_referrer_c / NetSuite: pi_first_referrer
• First Referrer Type – Microsoft Dynamics CRM: pi_first_referrer_type_c / NetSuite: pi_first_referrer_type
• First Referrer Query – Microsoft Dynamics CRM: pi_first_referrer_query_c / NetSuite: pi_first_referrer_query

Once they are present in the CRM, you may want to go to Administration –> Connectors and click Reverify on your connector (or you can simply wait until the next sync cycle and Pardot will automatically know to start syncing the new fields).

There are no additional form fields or custom fields to configure in Pardot as we already have this information within Pardot. It will start syncing as soon as the connector is reverified (or the next sync cycle starts).

Use Cases

Since we are now pushing referrer information into your CRM system, you can make some nice reports to determine the source URL (and keywords) of your leads, contacts, and opportunities. Tools like Google Analytics are great for showing where your traffic is coming from but your CRM (combined with analytics from Pardot) is a great place to see where your organization gets your revenue!

Tag filters are a great way to cut through a large table of prospects, marketing assets, etc. Any tag filters you apply will now be retained until you either remove them or delete your cookies. Otherwise they will persist, even after logging out and back in. This makes it much easier to work with a certain list of objects over a longer period of time. Now all table filters (tag, date, view, etc.) are persistent except for the type ahead filter.

The email wizard is pretty snappy other than going from step 3 to step 4 (step 4 is where you select distribution and suppression lists). This is because the wizard is pulling recipient counts for each of those lists in real time. When you have dozens (or hundreds) of lists, that can take some time. We have removed those counts (numbers in parentheses after the list names — see below) and are looking at better, much faster ways to display that info somewhere in the wizard. The wizard should progress from step 3 to step 4 very quickly now.

This similarly speeds up the recipients step in the drip program wizard as well.

We have been on a reporting kick lately with all of our changes to the form and landing page reports. We have just added a new Content section that contains reports for both files and custom Redirects. As with forms and landing Pages, you can filter by date, see a chart of activity, view a list of associated prospects (if any) and tag, export, or create a list out of them.

We just released some great cosmetic updates to the application that better integrate new elements of our brand image shared across the Pardot application and the new Pardot website. As with our previous cosmetic updates, everything should still be in a familiar place, we’ve just updated everything to look a little cleaner and friendlier.

What did we change?

• New top bar styling
• Slightly warmer background and colors to make working with the application for longer periods of time easier on your eyes
• New styling for the global search in the top right
• New breadcrumb styling and location
• New wizard step styling
• A new footer with helpful links to our status page, Idea Exchange, and Contact Page

Concept

We have added a Qwerly connector to Enterprise and Ultimate Edition accounts for automated social profile lookups of prospects. Pardot checks prospects for their profile names/links at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Klout. If publicly available, the system may also pull location data and a snippet or summary about the prospect. If any social profiles are found, their corresponding icons will be displayed next to the prospect’s name.

Why do some prospects have images and others do not?

Qwerly only compiles publicly available social data. If images are available, we will make an effort to display them. Many prospects, however, do not have publicly available images.

Why is the “Social Data” link sometimes grayed out?

If a prospect has not yet been looked up or if Qwerly did not return any social data for the record, the link will be inactive. If the Social Data link is active but you do not see any additional social media icons, it is likely that Pardot only found the LinkedIn profile. In that case, the LinkedIn will point directly to the prospect’s LinkedIn profile rather than simply doing a search in LinkedIn by first and last name.

What kind of hit rate should we expect?

The hit rate (rate at which social profile data is found) varies based on the types of prospects you have (some people are more or less likely to have their work addresses correlated to social profiles) but overall Pardot finds at least some social data on approximately 20% of lookups.

Social Profile View in CRMs

You can also set up a social profile view in your CRM system in much the same way you did you prospect activity view. If you use salesforce.com or SugarCRM (version 5.5+), simply download the latest salesforce.com AppExchange package or SugarCRM module and add the view to your lead and contact layouts. If you use NetSuite CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM (version 4+), you will need to follow the specific instructions in our knowledge base: Pardot Social Data for NetSuite CRM | Pardot Social Data for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Why don’t I see a Qwerly option under Connectors?

The connector is only available for Enterprise and Ultimate Edition Pardot accounts, so if you have a Group or Professional Edition account, you will not see Qwerly as an available connector.

Concept

Now when you change an email address for a contact or lead in salesforce.com, it will be changed for the corresponding prospect in Pardot the next time the record syncs. This is very useful if your sales team updates email addresses manually or via a data append service like Jigsaw or OneSource, or if you merge lead records together.

** “Use Case” is the set-up in Pardot and the CRM.
** “Action” is what the end user does.
** “Result” is what automatically happens when the push/pull jobs have run in Pardot.

Simple Scenarios

Complex Scenarios

Notes

• The complex scenarios take advantage of delete triggers that are part of Pardot’s AppExchange package. If you do not have these (i.e. if you have not updated the package within the past six months or so), the merge scenarios would not work. The simple scenarios would still work as normal. If you are unsure of your version, please install the package once more (if you already have the latest version, it will let you know during the install process).
• If you change the lead or contact’s email address to an address other than what is already in Pardot, the activity and lists iframe will of course not populate with data (as the records temporarily do not match) until the email change syncs down to Pardot (can take up to 15 minutes).

We have noticed that occasionally users forget to click “Finish” on the confirmation step of the wizards and fail to save/publish their content (although it is still saved within the wizard). To make that much less likely to happen, we have renamed the final step from “Review” to “Confirm and Save”, changed the button color to have it stand out more, added a button at the top of the screen on the final step so keep it above the fold, and added a warning about needing to save changes. Hopefully these tweaks make the final wizard step a bit more bulletproof.

Today we released a new option on Pardot forms, form handlers, and landing pages which adds an option to capture form and form handler data without applying a prospect cookie to the browser. This is very useful in situations where data for multiple prospects is being entered from the same browser, for example at a trade show booth, and solves the problem of multiple prospects getting “mashed” together and sharing the same activity because of multiple submissions from the same browser.

For forms, find this option on the third step of the form wizard, under the “Advanced” tab.

For form handlers, find this option as a new checkbox under the “Success Location”.

For landing pages, this option is “inherited” from whichever form you choose to display. If that form has Kiosk/Data Entry Mode enabled, the landing page will not send a cookie to the browser.

Forms and form handlers with this option enabled will record the prospect submission and run completion actions, send auto-responders, etc just like normal. However upon viewing and submission, the browser will not be cookied or tracked. Additionally the prospect’s activity record will only show an activity for the form, form handler, or landing page submission with no “view” activity just prior.

If the browser already has an existing visitor/prospect cookie, this information will be ignored and any progressive profiling will not activate. Hence for forms, activating this option removes the option to include the “Not You?” link (because it no longer applies), and also implicitly activates the “Always display form after submission” option.

Pardot now calls out / highlights 25 distinct visitor referrer types (up from nine previously). If a visitor arrives from one of these 25 recognized referrer sites, that site’s favicon and name will be displayed beneath the referring url.  While Pardot of course always displays the referring URL when available, we felt that the 25 sites listed below are significant enough to draw special attention to them via an icon and listing the site / service’s name.

The following new visitor referrer types are now called out in Pardot:

Google+
Wikipedia
Quora
Marketwire
MarketWatch.com
TechCrunch
StumbleUpon
Baidu
Craigslist
Ask
Reddit
Indeed.com
Feedburner.com
Monster.com
Scribd
Eventbrite.com

The following sites have always been called out:

Google
MSN
Bing
Yahoo!
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
PrWeb
Business.com

The campaign drill down report (the report you can up pull up by clicking Reports –> Overview –> name of a campaign) previously had one lonely chart on it (new visitors and prospects created over the past 30 days). We have changed the report to now pull in other relevant stats from marketing items associated with the campaign. You can now see the same chart (though a more stylish version) and also have your relevant prospects (prospects tagged with this campaign), landing pages, custom redirects, forms, and more all in one place.